Nice handle: Butter Me Up café prosecuted for food safety offences

Bristol News reports employees at a Bishopsworth café have been fined for food hygiene offences after pleading guilty to a string of safety standards breaches.

Laura West and Donna Flanagan, who were running the small Butter Me Up premises at Highridge Road, were also ordered to pay totals including prosecution costs of £2,937 and £2,855 respectively at Bristol Crown Court last week after pleading guilty to a number of offences at an earlier hearing.

The pair were also given an open-ended Hygiene Prohibition Order, banning them from participating in the management of any food business which, if breached, amounts to a criminal offence which could lead to a prison sentence.

Environmental Health officers from Bristol City Council launched an immediate investigation and visited the café in July 2018, having been alerted to the death of an elderly gentleman from suspected food poisoning after he and a friend were hospitalised.

Officers discovered that the business had been operating since November 2015 but had not registered with the Council since it opened. The café was also displaying a food safety sticker with a rating of 5, the highest rating, which belonged to a previous business at the same address.

Environmental health officers noted a range of further food safety offences, including little to no food hygiene and safety training, no written food safety management, poor pest control and lack of reliable disinfection practices. Environmental swabs and a cloth that had been used for handling equipment showed that food poisoning bacteria were widespread throughout the premises, indicating poor cleaning practices.

Fancy food ain’t safe food: What US delivery drivers grub on food orders before you get them

CBS Local reports that with food delivery platforms like Uber Eats, GrubHub and Postmates bursting at the seams, we wanted to know what some delivery people were doing with your food before you took a bite.

One food delivery driver – whose identity is concealed – told CBSLA’s David Goldstein he’s heard drivers talk about helping themselves to your order.

“Taking sips of soda all the time….sticking a straw in it and drinking it and putting another top on it,” he said.

So Goldstein’s team set up hidden cameras in restaurants and watched as food delivery people came to pick up – many of whom walked out with open bags where they can easily taste your food.

Cameras caught one man pick up a delivery order at a Fatburger restaurant in North Hollywood. After he put the bag on the front seat of his car, he proceeded to eat what looks like French fries.

As he backs out, he appears to put another fry into his mouth.

He proceeded to make two deliveries within minutes. On the first, the driver was seen wiping his fingers on his leg and then appears to lick them clean in his mouth.

The second delivery was the Fatburger order to a house in North Hollywood.

Goldstein then showed the video to Naimie Ojeil, who said the order was for his teenage kids.

“Horrible, disgusting,” he said.

When Goldstein confronted the driver at a later date, he didn’t have much to say.

Cameras caught another driver pick up a delivery, placing the bag on the passenger seat in his car, and then a minute or so later, he moves the bag, puts his hand inside and grab some fries before he drives away.

Pennsylvania restaurant trying to repair sewage pipe leak with duct tape

Department of Agriculture inspectors this week found a restaurant trying to repair a sewage pipe leak with duct tape.

A complaint was filed at U.S. 30 Diner on West Market Street in York and the inspector found 24 violations. The inspector found a sewage back-up in the basement piping system. One of the pipes was leaking and the facility was using duct tape as a repair. The inspector also says food employees were wearing soiled garments, and personal medication was found on a shelf with food. They say the entire food facility was extremely dirty with old food, trash, and dirt. The inspector also found a dog leash. The person in charge acknowledged that he brings his dog into the rear of the food facility, according to the report.

Chicago looks back on restaurant inspection

The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) conducts routine food inspections of over 15,000 food establishments to ensure the health and safety of their patrons.

In 2015, CDPH deployed a machine learning model to schedule inspections of establishments based on their likelihood to commit critical food code violations.

The City of Chicago released the training data and source code for the model, allowing anyone to examine the model. We provide the first independent analysis of the model, the data, the predictor variables, the performance metrics, and the underlying assumptions. We present a summary of our findings, share lessons learned, and make recommendations to address some of the issues our analysis unearthed.

Hindsight analysis of the Chicago food inspection forecasting model, 2019

Illinois Institute of Technology

Vinesh Kannan, Matthew Shapiro, and Mustafa Bilgic

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.04906.pdf

Everyone’s got a camera: Netherlands café edition

Janene Pieters of the NL Times reports a video of a mouse munching on a crepe in an Amsterdam cafe, resulted in the business being ordered closed by the Dutch food and consumer product safety authority NVWA. The video was posted on Twitter on Wednesday. NVWA inspectors went to inspect the cafe and found more vermin. Which is why the cafe was ordered closed, RTL Nieuws reports.

“The business can only be reopened if the entrepreneur has thoroughly cleaned everything up and has taken measures to prevent vermin”, the NVWA said. All food supplies currently in the store must also be discarded. The situation in the cafe was unsafe and a public health hazard, an NVWA spokesperson said to the broadcaster.

The NVWA is pleased that consumers report when they see vermin in shops or catering establishments. “With or without a video we take these kinds of complaints seriously. Mice are a direct threat to food safety.”

Most sushi producers in Ireland fail to meet food safety standards

I don’t like sushi and don’t eat it, especially the real kind with raw fish.

Andrew Lowth of Spin 1038 reports that checks have found almost every sushi maker and seller in Ireland has failed to meet food safety standards.

Of eleven manufacturers, restaurants and takeaways inspected, just one hadn’t broken food hygiene laws.

The Food Safety Authority found 76 breaches of food law, including poor parasite control and incorrect defrosting of raw fish.

The audit findings also include:

90% of food businesses audited did not have adequate controls in place relating to sushi production and processing activities

75% of food businesses did not meet the requirements of the legislation for  freezing fish for parasite control

Over 90% of the food businesses did not have adequate operational controls for sushi rice production

“Our audit sought to establish if food safety controls were being followed and the findings are very concerning,” says FSAI CEO Pamela Byrne.

“It showed that over three quarters of the food businesses did not have adequate food safety controls in place for this.”

Everybody has a camera: Colorado restaurant with rat edition

Evan Kruegel of Fox 31 reports a Denver restaurant with previous food safety violations is once again being inspected after a video surfaced showing a rat inside the restaurant.

Dominic Trujillo says he took the video on Sept.16, while waiting for Mt. Fuji Sushi & Hibachi to open. The video appears to show a rat eating food scraps between the glass and a window shade at the restaurant off of East Sixth Avenue in Capitol Hill.

He posted the video on social media and says a manager sent him a private message, offering a gift card in exchange for taking the video down.

The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment visited the restaurant Wednesday after seeing the video and found no violations.

“Yesterday we had the health department come and they checked everything, inspected everything, and everything looks fine,” said Osa Enebish, with the restaurant. “Our back door — it was left open and we fixed that door, so it might have came through that door, we don’t know.”

In February, the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment found 12 critical health code issues at Mt. Fuji, including rodent droppings found in storage cabinets.

15 sick: Salmonella in raw egg hollandaise shutters Dubai restaurant

Sajila Saseendran of Gulf News writes Dubai Municipality has shut down an American restaurant after 15 people fell ill following a food poisoning outbreak recently.

The Food Safety Department of the civic body ordered the outlet to close and held its chef and Person-In-Charge (PIC) of food safety responsible for the salmonella infection that caused the outbreak, the municipality stated.

The department has downgraded the food safety rating of the outlet and revoked its PIC certificate.

The outlet in a Jumeirah mall will be under strict monitoring for the next six months once it will be allowed to reopen after the closure period to corrective measures.

The team collected samples and conducted internationally accepted tests following which they traced the infection to raw eggs used in hollandaise sauce, officials said.

It was found that the chef had used raw eggs in violation of the food safety rules.

Following this, the department issued a fresh alert to eateries preparing food with eggs reminding them about its ban on using raw eggs in ready-to-eat products.

In 2012, the municipality barred Dubai eateries from using raw eggs in ready-to-eat products after authorities found them as a cause of many salmonella infections reported here.

New regulations that restrict the use of raw and under-cooked eggs were introduced and it was also made mandatory to declare their use in food labels or menus.

Tennessee restaurant leaves raw frog legs above banana pudding

WATE reports a customer complaint sent a health inspector back to a Morristown restaurant six weeks after a routine inspection.

Golden Dragon, 3325 Andrew Johnson Highway, Morristown – Grade: 70

The Golden Dragon on Andrew Johnson Highway scored a 70 during the most recent inspection. The score was passing. The health department considers a grade below 70 is considered “unsanitary.”

Several of the violations marked off in the report could lead to foodborne illness if not corrected.

The inspector wrote he watched a worker carry dirty dishes from the dining room into the kitchen and start preparing food without washing his hands.

Another kitchen worker washed large containers of food in the utility sink with water and put them away without rinsing and sanitizing them.

Inside the kitchen raw frog legs were stored over banana pudding and raw fish was stored over broccoli. That is OK at home but raw food contains bacteria and placing raw food over ready to eat food raises the potential for cross-contamination.

UK factory put uncooked sausage in pre-packed sandwiches posing ‘danger to health’

James Cain of The Mirror reports a factory has been ordered to stop making food after it put uncooked sausages into pre-packed sandwiches.

The Middlesbrough-based factory has been told by health authorities it risked causing a listeria outbreak.

Café Class Ltd has been served with a hygiene emergency prohibition order for food safety practices that posed an “immediate danger to human health”.

A court this week heard how the company extended the use-by dates of boiled eggs, cheddar cheese and streaky bacon, putting consumers’ health at risk.

The risk to the public was so severe that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued an immediate product recall on sandwiches, wraps and salads made by the company.

Listeria has been in the spotlight this year after six people died after getting listeria from prepackaged sandwiches and salads served in UK hospitals.

In the unrelated case the company, which traded with stores including Londis, Nisa and North East Convenience Stores, faced court as Middlesbrough Council sought an emergency hygiene order to prevent it from making food, reports the Local Demoracy Reporting service for Teesside Live .

Company directors Shahid Nawaz and Mohammed Haris Abdullah arrived at Teesside Magistrates’ Court yesterday to hear Middlesbrough Council lay out the case against their company.

Andrew Perriman, prosecuting for the council , told magistrates that Café Class, based in Riverside Park, was visited by environmental health officers on September 9.

The inspection was arranged “to assess compliance with a hygiene improvement notice served earlier in the year as a result of allergy management concerns”.

But Mr Perriman said the officers were shocked to discover the factory was routinely placing ingredients on their use-by date in sandwiches, wraps and salads which would then be labelled with a four-day use-by date.

“In respect of cooked ham aspect used in the final product, it is specified by the manufacturer to be used within three days once opened,” said Mr Perriman.

But the officers found that once opened, the ham had been placed in a plastic container on September 8 and labelled with a use-by date of September 11.

Mr Perriman said it could be argued that if September 8 is counted as day one, this actually meant the ham was being used for four days.

In any case, the factory would continue to use the ham as an ingredient right up until the final use-by day.

But Mr Perriman added: “It was then placed into a sandwich and given a further four-day use by date.

“Not only that, the packaging on the final product stated ‘once opened consume within 24 hours’.

He said this practice meant cooked ham with a use-by date of September 10 or 11 was actually being used in a product labelled with a use-by date of September 15 or 16.

“As a result, the three-day shelf life is exceeded by a further six days,” he said adding that this was “way past” safe limits.The company’s website says: “We here at Café Class carefully ensure that the standards of Food Agency are met at all times and any waste is disposed of appropriately.

“All our products are fully cooked but we do not send the food waste to landfill sites, thus helping the environment and fulfilling our responsibility towards the society.”

Uh huh.